


the force of gravity

by burlesquecomposer



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bonding, M/M, Post-Season/Series 06, Reunions, Spoilers for season 6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-24 21:11:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14962247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burlesquecomposer/pseuds/burlesquecomposer
Summary: As they sit together, Lance doesn’t realize he’s been smiling until he notices his mouth hurts. In a good way; he doesn’t feel like stopping. But then Keith spots him smiling and points it out, and Lance turns his face away, warm like he’s been out in the cold and given his first dose of heat. Like he’d forgotten what heatwasuntil fire returned to reclaim him, soothe him, melt him to liquid from head to toe.AKA, Lance and Keith reunite.(SPOILERS for Season 6)





	the force of gravity

He walks in, sure of himself, a broad strength to his shoulders and determination in his gaze. He’s the spitting image (sans purple skin) of his mother. His hair has grown long and somewhat shaggy, like he’s been giving himself haircuts as reckless as the way he fights—desperate, and with a blade.

He’s slightly taller, too. Bigger in general. Any edge Lance still hoped to have in their so-called rivalry, even height-wise, is gone. But Lance can’t bring himself to care about their race to some undefined, imaginary finish line. Keith isn’t even participating but somehow he’s winning. And that should be more upsetting than it is—yet Lance is struck, as Keith steps out of his ship and onto the hangar deck, how much Keith has grown in more ways than one.

For starters, he owns an actual Neopet.

But it’s more than that. Keith carries a weight on his shoulders but he doesn’t falter, doesn’t bow. He’s no longer the scared, haphazard kid from the desert pushed into a leadership role he wasn’t ready for. He’s still, in any case, the same head-on, rush-into-danger boy Lance remembers, though. The usual Keith Special with a side of Maturity, perhaps.

As they sit together, Lance doesn’t realize he’s been smiling until he notices his mouth hurts. In a good way; he doesn’t feel like stopping. But then Keith spots him smiling and points it out, and Lance turns his face away, warm like he’s been out in the cold and given his first dose of heat. Like he’d forgotten what heat _was_ until fire returned to reclaim him, soothe him, melt him to liquid from head to toe.

“It hasn’t been the same without you around,” Lance says.

 

* * *

 

He’s not as boisterous and loud as Keith expects when he returns. He almost wonders if two years have passed for the others, too, but a brief discussion confirms they’re the same as he’d left them, when he’d last seen them. So it’s not time that would explain why Lance is downcast, head lowered, subdued. When Hunk and Pidge run off to their lab to build something new and exciting, Lance hangs back. Like he knows, doesn’t have to be told, that he’s not invited. Not _really_.

Something’s happened. Keith’s not sure Lance would want to talk about it. But if even the others, who have spent months with him in Keith’s absence, have failed to notice what Keith has noticed in mere hours—perhaps Lance has changed slowly, or perhaps Keith's being away makes him more attuned to dynamic shifts—he has a feeling Lance might have nowhere else to turn.

He hates the way his mother smiles so knowingly at him. They’ve spent two years alone together; it was bound to come up. It’s still in Keith’s nature to deny it, but that changes when he sees Lance again after so long, after everything.

Lance needed someone to listen to him once before. Maybe he needs that again. Hell, maybe he doesn’t. That won’t keep Keith from trying—it’s better than turning a blind eye.

 

* * *

 

Finding a moment alone proves more difficult than he’d thought it would be, especially as they begin their journey to Earth separately in their lions. But eventually, they settle on a Mars-like planet, their pit stop while the lions rest and recharge. Keith found Lance up on the hull. They’ve been talking for what seems like hours about mundane, inconsequential things, updates that don’t mean much. (Keith’s reunion with the Red Lion was a bittersweet one, both of them knowing Keith would continue to pilot Black. Still, Keith thanks Lance for taking care of Red.) Keith stretches his legs out over the hull as Lance rambles about his family, how much he’s missed them, what things might be like back home.

Keith thinks about his shack in the desert, and that’s all. Eventually, silence falls between them when Keith can’t reciprocate the conversation. They walk apart, stretching farther and farther as stars do, forever running from one another into a vast, unforeseeable darkness, so fast they hardly see it coming but so slow they don’t notice each casual inch. And now that Keith’s been gone from the team, from Lance, for so long, Keith knows he can’t bear to leave again. That darkness, that distance, he knows could easily consume him.

“It hasn’t been the same without you around,” Lance says to him. He’s staring off into the rusty sunset, his brown skin aglow with red and pink and orange that seeps into his face and lights up his eyes. Lance glances at Keith despite himself, like he doesn’t mean to, but he also doesn’t pull his gaze away.

Keith cocks his head at Lance, causing his hair to spill from his shoulder. He finds himself smiling and even chuckling, feeling not only that Lance needs it but that it comes naturally, that he’s happy to be here. That home isn’t the shack, not only—it’s right here, and anywhere else this journey takes them. He places his hand on Lance’s shoulder, gentle, lingering there with a thumb at his clavicle and his fingers catching on the collar of Lance’s tee.

“I missed you too, Lance.”

And again, just like the day Keith returned, Lance smiles, and his warmth challenges the sun that now sinks sheepishly below the horizon as if it were upstaged. That’s a smile Keith believes he could orbit for two years, and four, and many more after that.


End file.
